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Friday, September 23, 2011

Where to start when you've just purchased a 15 acre property that's been vacant for more than a year?

Mow. Mow. Mow.

As I've mentioned, Wagmore was owned by the bank prior to us purchasing it. The bank took care of interior cleaning on home, and they mowed the grass immediately around the house. But the property is mostly fields, and those were left woefully unattended.

So our first order of business? Find someone who could mow 15 acres of more-than-waist-high grass!

The Husband called around, looked on Angie's List, and got a few bids.

Here are some before & after pics:

BEFORE

The part of the back yard not mowed

by the management company - grass only knee-high

More of the back yard -- headed to the SW field

The NW field. Grass nearly as high as the fence!

The NE field. Tall, tall, grass

Apparently all of this tall, dry grass had some of the neighbors worried. Some of them were even thinking about reporting it as a fire hazard. Good that our first order of business was mowing. Selfishly, I wanted to see what the contours of the land are like.

After 2 days of mowing, things look a lot better.

AFTER

The NW field. Looks MUCH better.

The mowed field looks so inviting for a walk with dogs -

or a gallop on a horse!

Looking towards the SW field

The NW field again.

Grass MUCH lower than the fence now.

The NE field - looking towards the house.

The NE field. Now you can see the neighbor llamas.

Denzil inspects the mowing.

A much more Cardi-friendly height!

The fields look much better now. The down side to the mowing:

Seeing the tractor mowing the fields has increased the intensity of The Husband's desire for a tractor.

The grass is low, but this has revealed that there's a lot of stuff on the property that a field mower just can't tackle. But more on that in the next post...

YIKES! I really did intend to practice more before next weekend's agility trial. Life just got in the way. Ziggy HAS had a lot of outings to soccer matches where he's working on becoming more huggable. Do you think that will help us get a Q in agility?!?

I will have the opportunity to run a couple more courses before next weekend - and do a bit of backyard practice. It's too late to withdraw my entry for any sort of refund, and the trial is only 10 miles away, so I'm thinking it will be good practice for both of us.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Some of you may know that The Husband is from that small island across the ocean that is the United Kingdom. What you may not know is that in the UK many homes/properties have names. Sometimes they don't even have street numbers, just a house name and the city.

Last time we were visiting the UK we were in the middle of the months-long saga of buying our property in Washington State. As we drove around, we noticed all of the signs indicating the names of properties/houses. Names like "The Oak Tree" and "The Rose Cottage" and "Stag's Leap." The more we noticed the names, the more sure we became that our property needed a name.

I thought it was a great idea - a name, a logo, a brand... So many options. The Husband thought it was a great idea, too - bringing a little bit of "his culture" with us.

Then came the tough part - what to name it? We wanted a name that would convey a happy, pleasant, and, well, dog-friendly tone. Something that made people smile and not think that the owners of the property were too stuffy, or too crazy.

We tossed around a number of names, and finally landed on one we both liked: Wagmore Farm.

So off we go. Right now I'm debating whether to make posts about Wagmore on this blog. Do you think it would be straying too far from my usual life-with-dog topics to discuss fixing up a house and a property??

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Tomorrow I hope to set up another agility course in the back yard. Ziggy needs to run some courses, as he and I start agility class again on Tuesday. Oh, and I have Z entered in a local agility trial the first weekend in October.

Rip gets to work on some jump drills (still low jumps) and work on tunnels. He is on the waitlist for beginning agility class.

Maggie gets to run tunnels and jump drills with Rip. She gets very upset if she doesn't get to do something!

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Oh, in case you're wondering

I'm a (some say crazy) dog person who enjoys training my dogs and learning as much as I can along the way.
I share tales of dog training, life with my Cardis, work on our dream property in Washington State, and the occasional bit of travel.